Text editors can be used for writing code, editing text files such as configuration files, creating user instruction files and many more. In Linux, text editor are of two kinds that is graphical user interface (GUI) and command line text editors (console or terminal).

In this article I am taking a look at some of the best 12 open source commonly used text editors in Linux on both server and desktops.

1. Vi/Vim Editor

Vim is a powerful command line based text editor that has enhanced the functionalities of the old Unix Vi text editor. It is one the most popular and widely used text editors among System Administrators and programmers that is why many users often refer to it as a programmer’s editor. It enables syntax highlighting when writing code or editing configuration files.

If you want to see our complete series on vi(m), please refer the links below:

2. Gedit

This is a general purpose GUI based text editor and is installed by default text editor on Gnome desktop environment. It is simple to use, highly pluggable and a powerful editor with the following features:

Support for UTF-8

Use of configurable font size and colors

Highly customizable syntax highlighting

Undo and redo functionalities

Reverting of files

Remote editing of files

Search and replace text

Clipboard support functionalities and many more

Gedit Editor

3. Nano Editor

Nano is an easy to use text editor especially for both new and advanced Linux users. It enhances usability by providing customizable key binding.

Nano has the following features:

Highly customizable key bindings

Syntax highlighting

Undo and redo options

Full line display on the standard output

Pager support to read form standard input

Nano Editor

You can check our complete guide for editing files with Nano editor at:

4. GNU Emacs

This is a highly extensible and customizable text editor that also offers interpretation of the Lisp programming language at its core. Different extensions can be added to support text editing functionalities.

Emacs has the following features:

User documentation and tutorials

Syntax highlighting using colors even for plain text.

Unicode supports many natural languages.

Various extension including mail and news, debugger interface, calender and many more

Emacs Editor

5. Kate/Kwrite

Kate is a feature rich and highly pluggable text editor that comes with KDesktop Environment (KDE). The Kate project aims at development of two main products that is: KatePart and Kate.

KatePart is an advanced text editor component included in many KDE applications which may require users to edit text whereas Kate is an multiple document interface(MDI) text editor.

The following are some of its general features:

Extensible through scripting

Encoding support such as unicode mode

Text rendering in bi-directional mode

Line ending support with auto detection functionalities

Also remote file editing and many other features including advanced editor features, applications features, programming features, text highlighting features, backup features and search and replace features.

Kate Editor

6. Lime Text

This is a powerful IDE-like text editor which is free and open-source successor of popular Sublime Text. It has a few frontends such as command-line interface that you can use with the pluggable backend.

Lime Editor

7. Pico Editor

Pico is also a command line based text editor that comes with the Pine news and email client. It is a good editor for new Linux users because of its simplicity in relation to many GUI text editors.

Pico Editor

8. Jed Editor

This is also another command line editor with support for GUI like features such as dropdown menus. It is developed purposely for software development and one of its important features is support of unicode mode.

Jed Editor

9. gVim Editor

It is a GUI version of the popular Vim editor and it has similar functionalities as the command line Vim.

Gvim Editor

10. Geany Editor

Geany offers basic IDE-like features with a focus on software development using the GTK+ toolkit.

It has some basic features as listed below:

Syntax highlighting

Pluggable interface

Supports many file types

Enables code folding and code navigation

Symbol name and construct auto-completion

Supports auto-closing of HTML and XML tags

Elementary project management functionality plus many more

Geany Editor

11. Leaf Pad

This is a GTK+ based, lightweight GUI based text editor which is also popular among Linux users today. It is easy to use by new Linux users.

It has the following features:

Codeset option

Allows auto detection of codeset

Options of undo and redo

Display file line numbers

Supports Drag and Drop options

Printing support

Leafpad Editor

12. Bluefish

Bluefish is an easy-to-install and use text editor targeting Linux programmers and web developers. It offers a wide set of features as listed below:

Lightweight and fast

Integrates external Linux programs such as lint, weblint, make and many others and filters, piping such as sed, sort, awk and many more

Spelling check feature

Supports working on multiple projects

Remote file editing

Search and replace support

Undo and redo option

Auto-recovery of modified files

Bluefish Editor

Concluding

I believe the list is more than what we have looked at, therefore if you have used other free and open source text editors, let us know by posting a comment. Thanks for reading and always stay connected to Tecmint.

Aaron Kili is a Linux and F.O.S.S enthusiast, an upcoming Linux SysAdmin, web developer, and currently a content creator for TecMint who loves working with computers and strongly believes in sharing knowledge.

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I’ve been favouring the Qt based Eric for the last few months though it’s primarily focused on python there is alot of languages it handles well. You also missed the big new open source editor of the year atom